© “Stopped on John R – Detroit” / photograph by H. Walker
The majority of my time commuting anywhere involves looking at signs. Street signs always capture my attention. When I take John R Street to *Stef-n-Ty’s Boutique and Coffee Shop, it runs both north and south until it gets to a point where I pass a STOP sign that faces southbound right before it becomes one-way going north. I kept trying to make out what it said for nearly a month, but the speed I was traveling made it impossible to turnaround without flying into the side of one of the many old homes along the way.
When I passed by it today, I noticed that it was painted over.
Free K D
Where is KD?
Why is he not free?
What did he do that he is no longer free? And who are his friends that want him free?
In 1985 back in Chicago, I used to walk to school past a building that housed newly-released prisoners in a building on the southeast corner of Ashland and Monroe. Sometimes, the men residing there would holler out the windows at my school friends and I good morning or come here lil fucker and give me a cigarette. Sometimes, we’d cuss back at them and they’d bang on the gated windows and threaten to beat our asses if they caught us. The adults in my neighborhood along Lake Street called it a halfway house. The reasoning was that it was the stop just before their full release back into the community. We didn’t know any of the men who resided there personally, and wouldn’t be able to identify any of them had they got out and walked past us. All the grown folks, however, warned us about going near that building, though.
On a Friday morning, a small group of us were leaving school for the day and went walking north on Ashland Avenue towards Madison Street where the store was. Right before we crossed Monroe, we looked to our right and saw a group or men being lead in a single-file line into a side entrance by uniformed, armed guards. I watched them one-by-one and when I spotted the one who looked not that much older than I was, I stopped to watch. In the process, I got left behind. The guard held the line at him. I couldn’t help but wonder what had gotten him sent to the halfway house. When the line moved, I watched until the last person was in before catching up with my friends. We all went to the store on Madison next door to the lounge, the People’s Palace, and from there, we all parted ways. There was, however, a young boy who walked the same direction I did back to Hermitage, but we didn’t know another. I would turn north off Madison and go up Hermitage Avenue to my building and he would keep going further west on Madison to wherever he went.
I never knew who he was. Sometimes he spoke, other times you could see his mind was on something else. When winter came, I’d see him walking fast with his hands in the pockets of his camouflage jacket looking straight ahead. Other times, I’d see him standing waiting on the Madison bus stop smoking a cigarette while staring across the street towards Ogden. This went on until after I graduated from eighth grade and then I didn’t see him anymore. His absence didn’t register until they painted the gates around the Patrick Sullivan Senior Citizens Apartment Building on the south side of Madison Street just north of Ashland. The gateposts were painted jet black and gave the building a futuristic look, and at night, it reflected the glow from the streetlights.
“You shouldn’t be out this late, somebody could snatch you up or kill you!”
The voice belonged to the man I used to see at the bus stop all the time when I was in 7th and 8th grade. In October of 1987, I was a freshman in high school and was walking from the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on Madison and Ashland after taking two trains: the Ravenswood Train from the Damen stop on the far North Side then transferring to the Lake-Dan Ryan Westbound from State and Lake in Downtown Chicago. Walking from the Lake Street Train (now called the Green Line), I wasn’t thinking about anything but using my “3-piece-meal-for-a-dollar” coupon. Along the east side of Ashland Avenue, Union Park ran from Lake Street to just before Madison. Other than Mary Thompson Hospital, Spaulding School, and the First Baptist Congregational Church of Chicago there was nothing else on the west side of the street. I left the restaurant with my backpack on and my Eddie Bauer portfolio bag in one hand and my chicken order in the other. I didn’t even see where he came from.
“Do anybody know you out this late? Your mama? Your daddy?”
I looked back at the voice belonging to the stranger I’d known but not known, and I didn’t answer. I kept walking down Madison and trying not to show I was worried, for the first time, about something happening to me. As I approached Paulina, the block before Hermitage Avenue, I was about to take off running. The man from the bus stop kept walking closer to me and asking the same two questions, neither of which I answered. I tried to pretend he wasn’t there, walking as close to the buildings on the right as I could. Coming towards me was another man whom I didn’t know at all, however, he looked at me and looked to my left and slightly back at the man following me then slowed down.
“Hey, Young Blood! I knew you was walking this way. Come on so we can catch up with your Mama and ‘nem!”
I recognized the man from the halfway house on Ashland, but I also realized the reason I’d stared those few short years prior was because I realized I knew him from the far west end of my neighborhood. He was in his early 20s, I knew, because he was a relative of one of my older sisters’ friends. And he knew me, and knew the man following close-by meant me some type of harm.
“Hey, Man! Two express trains went by me, and I had to wait forever for an ‘A’-train. I got hungry, but I was coming.”
“Right on, Young Blood! Come on. You know this cat behind you?”
The man had stopped only steps behind me and watched our exchange. He looked suspicious and kept his hands in his pocket.
“Nope, not at all!”
“Why you walking all up on my Lil Cousin like that, *joe?!?”
The man’s eyes widened; he clutched whatever it was in his pocket, but backed away and eventually took off running back eastward on Madison. I let out a sigh of relief and turned back to the person who’d saved me from who knew what. I was visibly shaken but also relieved because I had escaped something bad. “Man, I’m walking you right to your building after this. Don’t be on Madison like this no more! You see what kinda fucked up folks out in this world!”
That man was a sign of safety for me that day. I remembered in that moment that his story was that he got in some trouble and was locked up in Cook County Jail over a gun charge that was later dropped, but he had a burglary charge that they caught him on and dropped a year-and-a-half later and the day he was sent to the halfway house was the day I saw him but didn’t realize it was him. That was the last time I saw him before we moved from the Henry Horner Homes in December of 1987…
Every time I’d pass that sign on John R, his name would come back to me, but today, I saw the sign, and couldn’t remember his name. I know he used to skate at the Henry Horner Boys Club with us; go to the big cookouts in Union Park on Ashland Avenue and Lake Street. I even remember, now, that he could do all the coolest dances. On concrete grass, or wooden floors in the club gym, he would do five, no-hand back flips in a row just because. But his name still escapes me…
I hope wherever he is today that he is, indeed, free…
It’s amazing what a sign will make you remember once its gone…
HW
©“Crossing Lake Street – Chicago” / photograph by H. Walker, 2016
Notes:
* Stef-n-Ty Coffee Shop and Boutique, 9425 John R. St. Detroit, MI 48202 (313) 405-5759
* joe was/is a popular term that identifies a stranger or a familiar
BEING 40 SOMETHING 